Tag: Sports

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First Impressions Reviews

Summer 2017 First Impressions – Dive!!

Since he was a young boy, Tomoki Sakai has been in love with the sport of diving. After years of practice and stalwart determination, there’s no place where he feels more at home than in those brief seconds of flight before he’s submerged into the water. Unfortunately, he and the other boys of the Muzuki Diving Club (MDC) aren’t doing enough to please their sponsors, and the club is on the verge of being disbanded. Enter coach Kayoko Asaki, a fiery woman who is determined to pull the boys of the MDC back from the brink. Her mission: get the MDC to the Tokyo Olympics in one year’s time. Tomoki and his friends have a long road ahead of them as they begin their fight to fulfill their dreams. – ANN

Copyright 2017 (c) Zero-G

Streaming: Amazon Anime Strike

Episodes: 11

Source: Novel

Episode 1 Summary: As a youngster, Tomoki Sakai had a chance meeting that changed his life forever. He caught a glimpse of Yoichi Fujitani flying through the air as he dove into a pool below. It was then that Tomoki fell in love with diving. Tomoki’s road to being a competent diver was fraught with challenges, including his fear of opening his eyes before hitting the water, but having Yoichi as an inspiration (and occasional teacher and mentor) has helped give him the confidence to keep going. Tomoki’s personal life, however, isn’t quite so successful; though he accepted a request to go out from a girl named Miyu, he’s unenthusiastic about the relationship and would rather spend his time worrying about his sport. When rumors start going around about the closing of the Mizuki Diving Club, Tomoki’s place of training and home-away-from-home, all the members of the club are understandably stressed. In reality, the arrival of new coach Kayoko Asaki marks the beginning of a new, ambitious goal for MDC; get the club members to the Tokyo Olympics in one year’s time. But is this a goal that’s within the team’s grasp?

Impressions: Amazon seems to have a pretty firm grasp on many of the anime that piqued my interest this season, and Dive!! is no exception. As a part of Fuji TV’s long-running noitaminA anime programming block, it’s also part of Amazon’s current exclusivity deal. Years ago I was quite the noitaminA devotee, having been attracted to its penchant for broadcasting anime aimed at an older (and often female) audience. In more recent years its reputation has become more spotty, but at the very least I can still say that most of noitaminA’s programming is somewhat off the beaten path.

Yoichi demonstrates his skill. Copyright 2017 (c) Zero-G

This series will obviously invite many comparisons with Free! due to its similar title stylization and penchant for portraying young men in Speedo swimsuits. It’s also a sports series that seems to deal more in character dynamics and emotions, which was one of Free!’s strengths as an anime. Whereas KyoAni’s famous outing made a name for itself by combining sports action, character development, and great animation, not to mention fanservice aimed at individuals attracted to the male body, this series is, thus far, much more subdued in tone and execution. Whereas the episode ends with the introduction of a huge goal – get to the world stage by qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics – it spends much of the rest of the run time telling a much quieter, more contained tale of one young man’s internal conflict between what he feels he should like – having a girlfriend and spending time with his friends at school – and what he feels compelled to do – achieving even greater heights (literally!) in the sport he’s come to love. This fits in well with noitaminA’s catalog, which contains a lot of anime series that speak to the realities of human existence in ways both large and small within almost every sort of genre context. Despite Tomoki’s status as “yet another teenage male anime protagonist,” I actually felt like his struggles were relateable, because they’re also much bigger than high school. Many of us find ourselves pulled in multiple directions, and part of life is learning to balance our wants and needs in order to create a satisfying existence.

One moment that really pierced through some of my misgivings was the flashback to Tomoki’s one-on-one mentorship with Yoichi, the one time Yoichi seemed to find the time and inspiration to give direct instruction. Tomoki is told that he needs to keep his eyes open, to see where he’s going and orient himself to the water (this is after failing several times to enter the water cleanly from his dives and looking like a doofus). There’s an element of technical instruction to this advice, of course, but there’s also a broader message within it about facing challenges head-on with open eyes. One thing I was always told as a child when playing catch or tossing a Frisbee, was that I needed to keep my eyes open and not shy away from the object flying quickly and painfully towards my face. Practically, there’s a better chance you’ll catch the ball (or enter the water better) if you’re watching what you’re doing. There’s also a much higher chance of achieving success in life if you handle challenges head-on with as much knowledge as you’re able to gather. As someone with anxiety, this is a challenge that I have to face every day, and sometimes what essentially amounts to large-scale self-imposed exposure therapy is a terrifying proposition (and not one that works for me all the time or would work for anyone/everyone else regularly, either), but I find myself better able to cope now that I’ve at least made an attempt to face my fears. I was surprised to find myself relating to the show on this level so quickly.

Tomoki isn’t sure about his feelings for Miyu. Copyright 2017 (c) Zero-G

The unfortunate thing is that this isn’t a great looking show. This tends to be the case with a lot of noitaminA series, at least in my experience. They’re caught in a space where they’re meant to appeal to a more mainstream audience, but that means that there’s not really a built-in guarantee of financial success like there might be for a show related to a big-selling game, book, or manga property. I suspect that makes it less attractive to animators in some way, or there’s not as much energy and time devoted to scheduling and planning something that’s slick and produced in a way that’s meant to “wow” people. While the promo art might give the impression of shiny male abs and sports action, there’s ultimately not a lot of focus on that element. There aren’t high detail shots of abs or bodies in motion (there we go, comparing it to Free! again), but again I feel like that’s not really the point here. I do think that viewers might expect that kind of thing from this series, though, and if that’s the case there’s bound to be some disappointment.

There’s also a little bit of juvenile humor in this episode that feels really out of place considering how subdued the tone is. One of Tomoki’s friends at the MDC can’t seem to get over the fact that a beautiful woman has come to visit their coach, and there’s a much-longer-than-necessary scene in which this character melts down over the fact of the woman’s curvaceous body and his default assumption that their coach must be having an affair with her. It’s the episode’s one real attempt at being silly or funny, and beyond being generally out of place it’s also pretty crass and doesn’t add anything to the episode. I maintain that teenage boys aren’t nearly as stupid as anime makes them out to be.

Though there are a few missteps, I’m actually, surprisingly still interested in this series despite how it went against a lot of my initial expectations (or possibly because of it). I think it runs the possibility of being a little generic, and with only 11 episodes it doesn’t have much time to bring all the characters where they need to go, but I like that it seems very self-contained and doesn’t seem concerned with being bombastic and intense like a lot of other sports anime. This might be a show worth spending a little time with.

Pros: Seems to have a pretty deep message about facing anxiety and balancing the various elements of one’s life. The tone is pretty subdued.

Cons: The production values are lacking somewhat. There’s some juvenile humor that falls flat.

Grade: B-

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First Impressions Reviews

Summer 2017 First Impressions – Clean Freak! Aoyama-kun/Keppeki Danshi! Aoyama-kun

The handsome young soccer genius named Aoyama is a Japan representative. His play style is “cleanliness.” He doesn’t tackle and doesn’t head the ball. If he’s doing a throw-in, he’ll only do it if he’s wearing gloves. – ANN

Copyright 2017 (c) Studio Hibari

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 12

Source: Manga

Episode 1 Summary: Aoyama is the star soccer player on his high school team. This is in spite of (or perhaps actually because of) his germophobia. He won’t touch a dirty soccer ball, he won’t get his clothing dirty, and he won’t do anything that causes him to come into physical contact with other players, including his teammates. This drives his teammate Zaizen up the wall, since he thinks that everyone else is much too accommodating to Aoyama-kun’s needs. The thing is, though, that everyone else seems to admire Aoyama’s cleanliness, and they sure as heck think he’s the best player at their school. Even members of rival high schools keep trying to poach Aoyama-kun away. After Aoyama leads the team to victory in a game against a clearly better school, Zaizen starts to gain a grudging respect towards his unusual teammate.

Impressions: This episode is a great example of a premise that could have resulted in something really terrible, but which managed to avoid becoming terribad and instead settled comfortably into being slightly above average with some hit-or-miss comedy for flavor.

Aoyama goes for the goal. Copyright 2017 (c) Studio Hibari

Speaking as someone with a history of mental illness (though of a different style than featured here), I wasn’t looking forward to watching an anime try to feature a character who seems to be someone living with one.  Anime, like other forms of media, has a very spotty track record when portraying mental illness, and more often than not it serves as the punchline to a joke. For every show like Trapeze which to my memory seemed to get a lot of the emotional side of mental illness right (despite being a comedy), there are several more like Welcome to the NHK that mix up “profound social anxiety” with “hapless otaku maladjustment” and end up becoming insulting in the process. It’s a difficult thing to get quite right and there’s a feeling of glaring falseness that’s there when it’s wrong. So you can imagine how low my expectations for this anime were, knowing nothing much beyond its premise. Surprisingly, though, I’d qualify this attempt as “pretty okay,” which might not sound like high praise but which I think does a good job of capturing the fact that the show is decent without a lot of major screw-ups.

The first episode’s point-of-view character is Zaizen, who shortly becomes very frustrated by the fact that Aoyama seems to require so many special accommodations and his classmates and fellow team members seem unruffled by this and are even willing and able to deal with them without pulling their hair out. I think that Zaizen, despite being a pretty outspoken jerk throughout the episode, is use well throughout. Though I tend to stick with people online and in real life who understand the need to celebrate diversity, including neuro-diversity, I think there are many other people who are unfortunately not in the frame of mind to give others what they think of as “special treatment,” and showing Zaizen having that kind of reaction acknowledges that. That said, the point is that Zaizen isn’t shown a lot of sympathy, and in fact there are several people who try to get him to adjust his attitude by showing Aoyama’s good points as a player and a person – he’s an excellent soccer player with an incredibly accurate and focused playing style that’s the direct result of his needs as a player, after all. I think by the end of the first episode we’re all on board with who Aoyama-kun is.

Zaizen watches Aoyama’s post-game cleaning of the soccer balls. Copyright 2017 (c) Studio Hibari

One downside to this setup, though, is that Aoyama doesn’t get much of an opportunity to speak for himself. We’re positioned as outside observers who learn about Aoyama through the eyes of the people who know him. There are the gaggle of girls who have crushes on him because of his spotlessly clean hands (when in fact, all the hand washing would probably be more painful than anything else, but I suppose there has to be some element of fantasy), the other players and team manager who seem to be admirers rather than close friends with Aoyama, as well as the rival school members who know all about Aoyama’s skill on the field, but not really anything else about the way he operates as a person. It may be too much to ask for a comedic series to provide a lot of deep insight into a character, let alone from their own perspective. But that doesn’t make we want to stop asking for it.

Something I made note of while watching this episode was the fact that it exists somewhere in between a straight sports anime and a true gag series, and the juxtaposition of the two without a strong focus on either is actually a little bit disorienting. One shared trait of many of the best sports anime I’ve watched is that they do a good job of being funny while also portraying the seriousness and intensity of the sport. Hinata and Kageyama of Haikyu!! are quite the odd couple, and the comedic tension that arises due to their opposing personalities is really entertaining. But the show is also great at portraying exciting volleyball action and knows when to forgo the humor and bring that to the forefront. Clean Freak! Aoyama-kun seems to be just slightly uncomfortable focusing too much energy on exploring either side of the equation; there are a couple of good visual gags (Aoyama cleaning his classroom window got a chuckle out of me) and some heartfelt moments, like Aoyama working on the soccer balls after the game, I didn’t get the impression that the show was really committed to either piece. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like the first episode left much of an impact (aside from a repeating gag focused on a rival character’s abs – many people might find this kind of non-sequitur obnoxious, but it’s honestly so stupid that I actually laughed every time the character appeared with his shirt pulled up).

Aoyama is admired by his team’s manager. Copyright 2017 (c) Studio Hibari

Thankfully, the anime does seem to have a stronger visual style than its blander storytelling might suggest. During goofier moments, the characters do switch into kind of a funny “chibi” mode that, while not lending a lot of extra strength to the humor, does at least notify the viewer when things are meant to be comical. This is sort of a classic technique that might feel a little bit overbearing to some, but I found it kind of cute. The animation is fairly serviceable when portraying the sports action as well; the opening scene where Aoyama scores an important goal during the All-Japan championship is really well-done, as is the match that caps this episode and proves Aoyama’s prowess as a player (and his ability to be less-stringent about cleanliness depending on how far into the match he is – sometimes a little mud is tolerable, as long as it’s less than five minutes to the end of the game). The lines are clean (har har) and the animation is consistent throughout this opener.

Ultimately I don’t know if this show will satisfy sports anime enthusiasts or fans of comedy anime, but it does have the distinction of being significantly less offensive to me as someone with mental health issues than I would have expected, and its heart seems to be roughly in the right place, so that might be a decent starting place.

Pros: The animation serves its purpose well. The premise could have skewed in a much more offensive direction, but instead the bulk of the characters seem to be supportive of Aoyama’s needs.

Cons: The comedy and sports aspects seem to be at odds with one-another. That guy’s abs are like their own character.

Grade: B-